Lasseter is standing on the main stage of the Anaheim Convention Center in California in front of thousands of cheering Disney fans. It's August 2015, the opening day of D23 Expo, Disney’s biennial fan event, and the audience is a sea of Mickey Mouse ears and Frozen princesses. Star Wars lightsabers and Captain America shields.
A 58-year-old with round rimless glasses, an open, friendly face and the figure of Lots-o’-Huggin’-Bear, Lasseter is chief creative officer of both Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. But here, a stone’s throw from the original Disneyland, the fan reactions might lead you to believe you were witnessing the second coming of Walt himself.
Who can blame them? Since 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion (£4.85bn) and installed Lasseter and Pixar president Ed Catmull to impart their creative culture on its own faltering studio, Disney Animation has gone from turning out forgettable flops such as Home On The Range and Brother Bear to making critical and commercial mega-hits such as Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and the highest-earning animated film of all time, Frozen.
“It’s amazing what is happening in animation at the Walt Disney Company. Two incredible studios,” Lasseter says to the crowd. He’s talking to the audience, but also to his colleagues from Disney and Pixar, who pack the front section. “I’m so proud of this place.” After previewing Disney’s upcoming slate - including a crowd-frenzying appearance from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to promote Moana - Lasseter turns to Pixar.
“For the first time, we have not one original Pixar feature film coming out this year, but two,” he says. “And beyond those two films, we have the strongest slate of films we’ve ever had.” Lasseter is exuberant; after disappointing reviews - at least by Pixar’s phenomenally high standards - for 2011’s Cars 2 and 2013’s Monsters University, this spring’s Inside Out has been a phenomenal success, earning more than $770 million at the box office (Pixar’s second highest ever) and receiving the studio’s best reviews since Toy Story 3 (2010). If this month’s The Good Dinosaur, released on November 27, is anywhere near as successful, there’s a good chance that Pixar’s toughest competition at the Oscars this year will be itself.
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